Inside a Free Virtual Summit: 8,018 Registrations, $28,945 in Sales
Yesterday I filed a second LLC.
HobbyScool has lived inside my original company since I started it. As of July 27, it's its own legal entity in the state of Georgia, with its own name on the paperwork. The bank account, the payment processors, and the books all move next.
I'm doing that because I plan to sell HobbyScool.
I'm not working toward a date, I'm working toward a price. It goes on the market when it's worth $1 million, and if that takes until 2028 then it takes until 2028.
That changes what I write here. For the past year I've been publishing pieces of the $1M HobbyScool Experiment, which is my running record of building a creative education brand out in the open. I named it before I knew what the number meant. It turns out the $1M isn't revenue. It's the asking price.
So I'm going to publish the numbers every month until the day it sells, and that includes the months where something didn't work. This is the first one.
Why I'm Publishing Real Numbers Instead of Round Ones
Most people who run a free virtual summit never say what it made. So creators looking at the model are guessing, and the guesses are usually wrong in both directions. Some people assume a free event with thousands of signups must be printing money. Others assume free means it makes nothing.
Neither one is right.
There's a second reason. When you sell a business, a buyer doesn't get to take your word for anything. They look at whether the revenue repeats, whether it runs without you, and whether the traffic reliably turns into money. Publishing the numbers every month is how I build that record before anyone asks for it. It also means I find out how far I am from $1 million while there's still time to close the gap.
HobbyScool is a creative education brand with about 40,000 subscribers. It runs 12 or more free online summits a year. I don't teach at them and I don't run them day to day. A small team and a stack of AI systems handle the work.
The Event: 2026 Creative Tech Summer Retreat
This one ran in July. Three days, free to attend, with a paid VIP pass as the first offer and three more offers behind it.
The 7.7 percent VIP conversion came in above my normal range, which usually sits closer to 6 percent.
Here's how every dollar came in.
| Offer | Sales | Converted | Gross |
|---|---|---|---|
| VIP pass ($37, then $47) | 621 | 7.7% | $23,790 |
| Order bump: single workshop ($9) | 92 | 14.8% | $819 |
| Upsell 1: presentation bundle ($27) | 88 | 14.2% | $3,119 |
| Upsell 2: membership, yearly ($70) | 13 | 2.1% | $910 |
| Upsell 2: membership, monthly ($7) | 44 | 7.1% | $308 |
And here's what went back out.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Gross sales | $28,945.98 |
| Affiliate commissions (19.5% of gross) | ($5,641.30) |
| Refunds (15 orders, 2.4%) | ($590.00) |
| Meta ad spend | ($3,786.02) |
| Kept before processor fees | $18,928.66 |
Thirty-two affiliates made at least one sale, and together they drove 233 of the 621 VIP orders. That's 37.5 percent of the buyers coming from other people's audiences. One affiliate alone sent 40 buyers.
The Decision That Worked: Raising the Price Mid-Event
The VIP pass opened at $37. Partway through I moved it to $47 and left it there.
536 people bought at $37 and 85 bought at $47. Sales didn't stop when the price went up, they kept coming right through the final days. The biggest single sales day of the whole event happened the day before the increase, and then people kept buying at the higher price for another five days.
"85 people paid $47 for the same pass that 536 people had already bought at $37, and most of them did it in the last five days."
What the price step showedI'll run the same ladder at the next event and push the top step higher.
What We Found When We Looked at the Order Bump
The order bump on this event was a single craft workshop at $9, and it converted at 14.8 percent.
After the event we went back and pulled every order bump we've run over the past year, across roughly 2,800 VIP sales, and put them side by side for the first time. Planners and trackers with an AI component converted at 36 to 42 percent. Single workshops converted at 15 to 19 percent. Same $9 price, same checkout page, same kind of buyer.
We hadn't run that comparison before, so the workshop wasn't a bad call when we built the funnel. It was just the wrong product for that slot, and now there's a year of data saying so.
If that slot converts like a planner at the next event, it's roughly 155 more sales. Call it $1,400, from one product swap at checkout that takes about ten minutes to make.
The bump gets picked from the conversion data now instead of by feel. It's a step in the event checklist, and the planner formats go in that slot until the numbers say otherwise.
The Number a Buyer Will Actually Care About
Twenty-eight thousand dollars from one free event is the headline number, but the one that matters for a sale is $2.36 kept per free registration.
A buyer can do something with that. They can look at 12 events a year, look at the registration volume, and forecast. A single big launch number tells them nothing about next year. A per-registrant number tells them what happens every time I run one.
It also shows me exactly where the money is. Fix the order bump alone and that figure moves to about $2.50 without adding one new subscriber, one new speaker, or one extra hour of work.
The back of the funnel changed this time, and it's the thing I'd repeat. The $70 annual membership went into the upsell slot, and the $7 monthly moved to the downsell behind it. 13 people took the annual and 44 took the monthly, which is the most monthly signups we've ever had from a single event.
That's 57 new recurring subscribers out of one summit. It only produced $1,218 this month, so it looks small next to the VIP total. Recurring revenue is what raises what a business is worth, so the subscriber count matters to me more than the month's dollars do.
Breaking This Down by Flywheel Stage
If you've read anything else I've written, you know I run everything through five stages. Attract, Engage, Nurture, Retain, Advocate. It's just a way of asking which part of the business a decision actually touches.
8,018 free registrations from ads, affiliates, and my own list
Meta ads brought in 2,290 of those registrations at $1.65 each. Thirty-two affiliates made a sale, one of them sent 40 buyers on her own, and affiliates accounted for 37.5% of the VIP orders. The rest came from my own list.
7.7% converted to a paid VIP pass
A free registration produces no revenue on its own. 621 of these people made a first purchase, and those are the buyers every offer behind the VIP pass gets sold to.
57 new recurring members, a record for monthly signups
We put the $70 annual in the upsell slot and moved the $7 monthly to the downsell behind it. 13 took the annual, 44 took the monthly, and that's the most monthly signups we've had from one event.
What Happens Next
The next event is the Back-to-Creativity Summit, August 18 through 20, with 34 speakers. Two things change.
The order bump becomes a planner instead of a workshop. And the VIP price ladder starts at $37 and steps up twice instead of once.
I'll publish those results in September, next to these, so you can see whether the fix worked or whether I was wrong about the cause. If it doesn't move, I'll say that too.
Where is your business actually leaking?
Take the free Creator Growth Flywheel Scorecard and find the one stage costing you the most money right now.
Take the Free Scorecard →Frequently Asked Questions
One of my July 2026 summits brought in 8,018 free registrations and $28,945.98 in gross sales. After affiliate commissions, refunds, and $3,786.02 in Meta ad spend, I kept $18,928.66 before processor fees. That works out to about $2.36 per free registration.
My summits usually convert around 6 percent of free registrants into VIP pass buyers. This event hit 7.7 percent, with 621 VIP sales from 8,018 registrations. Anything in the 5 to 8 percent range is healthy for a free summit funnel.
It depends entirely on what you put on the order form. When we compared every bump we ran over the past year, planners and trackers with an AI component converted at 36 to 42 percent. Single workshop bumps converted at 15 to 19 percent. Same price, same traffic, very different results.
It worked for me. I moved the VIP pass from $37 to $47 partway through and sales kept coming. 85 people bought at the higher price. The deadline is what drives the buying, not the price itself.
Buyers care about recurring revenue, whether the business runs without the founder, and how reliably you can turn traffic into money. Revenue per registrant matters more than a single big launch number because a buyer can multiply it.
